This film overflows with sexual orgies, drug-induced manias, and such disgusting decadence that it ranks right up there as one of the most pornographic and repulsive films to come out of Hollywood. But, of course, that’s what director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio wanted. It’s their personal diatribe against capitalism, and they needed The Wolf of Wall Street to be as offensive as possible. Adapted by screenwriter Terence Winter from the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, the gross movie focuses on a real-life pill-popping stockbroker who bilked investors. The hard-core porn film begins with a shot of a woman’s naked bottom in which Belfort (played by DiCaprio) is blowing cocaine, with a straw, into the woman’s backside. Belfort built a financial empire based on fraud and money laundering, spent time in prison, and then ended up a motivational speaker. He wrote a biographical book (he got the Wolf moniker from a Forbes magazine article), which made him lots of money, and which then garnered him new millions when Red Granite Pictures decided to produce his story for the screen. The exhausting, redundant, and mind-numbing 3-hour movie runs way too long with scenes of degenerate coke snorting, gory graphic nudity, and nauseating infantile behavior. Scorsese goes way over the top in scenes of sexual perversion, which the director seems to have particularly relished. That, and more, makes The Wolf of Wall Street, not only a vulgar, vile, and venomous piece of cinematic rot, but the worst film of the year. Scorsese beats us over the head with an unrelenting assault of the darkest side of human behavior, which he would probably defend by saying he wanted to create a realistic picture of degeneracy. But if it's realism that he's going for, why does he feature a parade of totally nude women while leaving out male frontal nudity? We do see DiCaprio’s backside enveloped in shadow, and we see his flat chest and thin arms (he looks better in clothes), but we never see him, or any other man in the movie, in frontal nudity. Has Scorsese forgotten that he’s on the side that is supposed to be for equality? One knows the movie is a tirade against capitalism rather than a serious look at a man’s decline because we never find out what really motivates Belfort. We never discover what drives the man’s desperation; we just see a caricature meant to represent Wall Street as obscene and abhorrent as possible. One can see the workings of screenwriter Terence Winter’s mind as he equates gangsters with Wall Street brokers. “Their common goal,” he said, “is to separate people from their money. Either it is ‘I will break your legs if you don’t give me $500 every Friday’ or ‘I’m going to sell you some stocks you don’t need.’ It amounts to the same thing in the end.” No, it doesn’t. You don’t have to buy stocks that you don’t want or need. If you don’t buy the stocks, no one is going to break your legs. If it is force that Winter finds objectionable, then why doesn’t he compare the government to the mafia; it is the government that is forcing people to buy insurance they don’t need and don’t want to buy? In an interview with CNN, DiCaprio said that “the attitude of his character is directly attributable to the destruction of the economy.” The actor believes that the 2008 financial meltdown was caused by Wall Street when, in reality, it was caused by government. He isn’t aware, or more likely doesn’t care to know, that the banks were forced by the government to make bad loans that resulted in the real-estate bubble that brought the economy down. The mandates the bankers had to follow came from the Community Reinvestment Act, which Congress passed to reduce discriminating credit practices against low-income neighborhoods. It was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1977, and was expanded with Clinton and Bush. Its legislation forced banks to lend to borrowers who put no money down on a property, had no income, had no verification of assets, and who had no way of repaying the loans. There is a rotter in every industry, which is no reason to condemn the economic system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other. Capitalism is a system in which people have the freedom to voluntarily exchange property with each other. It is based on free choice, not force. It is the profit motive, which the left condemns, that is the impetus for entrepreneurs to create cell phones, computers, knee replacements, stents, life-saving medicines, and everything else that keeps us alive and makes our lives better. In what universe have statist economics (socialism and communism) created a free and prosperous society? But then, those who hate capitalism don’t want people to be free and prosperous. They want everyone to be equally miserable and poor. What’s worse? A flim-flam salesman selling snake-oil stocks, or a lying politician promising you the moon while picking your pocket. Belfort defrauded investors, but how does that come close to a head of state who has defrauded 300 million people? DiCapiro has said that “We want (the movie) to be a grand American epic of greed.” It’s apparent that the actor is oblivious to his incredible hypocrisy. DiCaprio’s net worth is $250 million, but that’s not enough. He has been hawking Tag Heuer watches, and making Jim Beam and Jack Daniel commercials to rake in even more dough. He owns a luxury Malibu property listed at $23 million, which he rents out for $150,000 a month; owns a 4,551 square-foot mansion on Hollywood Hills; owns a 104-acre island in Belize that he purchased for $1.7 million; and much more. Then there’s Scorsese, who also hates commercialism and capitalism. He is worth $70 million, lives in a six-bedroom, 6, 640 square-foot townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that he purchased for $12.5 million. But that’s not enough for the man who looks down on money-making since he shoots ads for Dolce & Gabbana, as well as doing commercials for American Express and Apple’s Siri. And then there’s Riza Shahriz Bin Abdul Aziz, the founder and CEO of Granite Pictures, the producing company of The Wolf of Wall Street. As the son of the Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, the head of Granite was born to privilege. He recently purchased a luxurious 15-room duplex (with 7,728 square feet of interior space and a 1,224 square-foot terrace) New York apartment for $33.5 million. Aziz, who previously made gobs of money as an investment banker in England, has backers for his motion picture company that include politically connected investor friends in Malaysia, the Middle East and Asia. The Wolf of Wall Street was produced for $100 million. Talk about greed. How can these guys bash money and capitalism with a straight face? Belfort was a bad apple, but that doesn’t mean everyone in finance was as venal and dumb as he was. There are a lot of creeps in Hollywood and government—indeed, a lot more than on Wall Street. Why aren’t films being made about corrupt politicians or greedy movie stars who live lavish, hedonistic lives? Why aren’t movies being made about politicians who will say and do anything for power? Why aren’t DiCaprio and Scorsese doing movies about bureaucrats who haven’t been elected by anyone, but who have power over everyone’s life (such as the IRS, whose audits depend on one’s political point of view; the NRA, which is snooping into our every communication; or the EPA, which believes it owns other people’s property)? Or why don’t DiCaprio and Scorsese do a film about how the commander-in-chief turned away when America’s ambassadors were being brutally murdered, and then blamed the massacre on an innocent victim. Or why don’t they do a film that’s not about the power of greed to destroy an individual, but a movie about the greed of power to destroy a nation.